Most of today's buildings are lit up, and uniformly conditioned regardless of the state of occupancy in each part of the building. The modern occupancy control systems try to address the issue by allowing controlling of conditioning in only the rooms that are occupied. These systems allow for certain potential energy savings or improved comfort for building occupants, however their installation is costly and rarely do the energy savings realized from using the systems cover the cost of their installation. To be truly effective, a system has to be as inexpensive as possible, while providing high quality intelligent control.
The cost of installation of building control systems includes cost of the equipment as well as the time and labor involved in the physical installation. While the cost of the equipment can be controlled, the time and labor are often unpredictable as they can vary significantly from one building to another. These labor-related costs are the primary driver of the total system installation cost for many buildings. These systems often require professional installation where a trained technician first installs then configures and tests the system. Complexity of such installation adds significantly to the overall cost of the system deployment. Likewise the maintenance of a complicated system requires additional labor further adding to the total cost of ownership for the system.
The invention disclosed here aims to reduce the total cost of ownership of a building's light, shade and HVAC control system. It takes advantage of the algorithms described herein to ensure that the installation and maintenance are as non-labor intensive as possible. The algorithms serve to allow the installers to simply mount the sensors in any controller area of the building and power them up, with the system then guiding the other aspects of installation and service and allowing for its seamless control.
The disclosed system's operation takes advantage of adaptive algorithms that learn specific human behaviors from the input of various controls and sensors in the building. These sensors normally include occupancy sensors, as well as door sensors, locks, building alarm consoles, people's smart phones, etc.